Heroes are not the stuff of myth: they keep us safe each and every day

It’s normal when confronted by horrific events someplace in the world to feel a mixture of emotions. Grief, for the victims whose stories you have read about in the papers. Anger, for the fact that such a tragedy could be allowed to happen. Despair, that the world is in such a rotten state that such horrors can occur. Relief: that it didn’t happen to someone you love. Guilt, for thinking that.

Last week’s terror attack came closer to home, and for many these feelings were heightened. Among those, something else: fear. When the unthinkable happens, what do we do? In moments like these, it’s natural to feel hyper-aware of one’s own mortality and to think of all the people we cherish. We become aware of life’s fragility. We reflect on how important it is to tell the people we love that we love them.

This fragile, precious life is the only life we’ll ever have. It makes sense to make it count, and most of us will try our bests to lead positive, happy existences that do not cause harm to others. It is a sad fact of existence, however, that some people mean to cause harm. When they do, and when tragedy strikes, it is profoundly traumatic. It shakes us. And it brings home just how much we owe to those extraordinary people who put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe, to keep us healthy, to keep us alive.

When the gunshots rang out at the Palace of Westminster last week, many people fled. But while police rushed passersby away from the scene, their colleagues ran towards the fray. Nearby hospital workers leapt from their posts… and ran towards the chaos. PC Keith Palmer, in the course of protecting civilians, was mercilessly stabbed to death by a fanatical Islamist and terrorist who had already murdered several others with his car that afternoon. We are moved by the heroism of Keith Palmer and all the emergency services workers, and by the incredible job they did that day, and do every day, to keep all of us safe. It is to their credit that the casualties of this terrible incident, though severe, were not so much greater.

Life is fragile. Life is short. Life can be lonely. It can be sad. And grief can seem too much to bear. But it is thanks to the everyday heroism of individuals like Keith Palmer that we are able to make so much of such short lives as we have. They afford us space to experience the very best of the human condition: things like love, happiness, fulfilment, the comforts of family. We all must realise that as human beings, our lives are inextricably linked. All of us must cherish those bonds, for they make us who we are and give us license to live our lives in the ways we choose. And this is just as true: we must remember, and pay tribute, to the brave individuals who make the good possible. Thank you.

Contrary to what many newspapers reported, the ECJ did not permit or issue a ‘Muslim headscarf ban’

Headline afterheadline afterheadline yesterday, from across the political spectrum, erroneously reported that the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the top court of the European Union, has ruled that bans on Muslim headscarves in the workplace can be legal. But this is not accurate and such headlines risk causing a huge amount of acrimony if, for example, employers try to bring in such bans when in fact they don’t have the law on their side.

To be fair to the journalists who wrote all the headlines, theECJ press release on the matter is very confused. It starts off by simply saying ‘An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination’. But it doesn’t define anywhere what direct discrimination means, and doesn’t talk about its sibling, indirect discrimination, until well into page two – and when it does, it’s fairly muddled in the language it uses. We at the British Humanist Association had to read it through about three or four times before we got our heads round it.

So, let’s try and clear things up a bit. Essentially in equality and human rights law there are two types of discrimination. Direct discrimination, as it relates to religion or non-religious beliefs, is where you have a policy that targets someone because of their religion or belief.

Indirect discrimination is where you have a policy that does not target someone because of their religion or belief per se, but it nonetheless puts individuals of particular religions or beliefs at a disadvantage, when compared to those of other religions or beliefs.

Yesterday’s ruling actually focussed on two different cases – one from Belgium and one from France. In both cases, the employer had a policy of not allowing employees to wear religious dress or symbols. This led to two Muslim employees wearing the headscarf to be fired. They then took the cases through the domestic courts and finally up to the European court.

Neither employer’s policy was deemed to target Muslims specifically, so it was not found to be direct discrimination. That seems to me to be correct.

However, indirect discrimination is not always unlawful. It can in fact be lawful where the discriminatory requirement can be said to be a ‘genuine and determining occupational requirement, provided that the objective is legitimate and the requirement is proportionate.’

A clear example of this is acase heard at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in 2013, involving a nurse called Shirley Chaplin. She was wearing a cross around her neck, and her NHS Trust deemed that this posed a risk to her and patients’ safety in case ‘a disturbed patient might seize and pull the chain, thereby injuring herself or the applicant, or that the cross might swing forward and could, for example, come into contact with an open wound.’ Her Trust asked her to wear the cross on a pin instead. She refused and took a human rights case. She lost the case because it was found that her employer’s request that she wear the cross on a pin instead of a chain was a proportionate means of pursuing the legitimate objective of patient safety.

On the other hand, a case where an employer was found to have got it wrong was the case of Nadia Eweida, which wasalso determined at the ECtHR in 2013. She also wanted to wear a cross round her neck, and her employer, British Airways, said that this went against their uniform policy. This was deemed not to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim and so her claim of indirect discrimination was successful.

In yesterday’s two cases the ECJ made no ruling as to indirect discrimination. It set out the tests by which the indirect discrimination could possibly be lawful. This included the problematic concept that it might be okay to require no religious symbols in customer-facing staff, which seems to me to go further than the ECtHR ruling with Eweida did (and, Darren Newman has argued, is less likely to be seen by European courts as okay in a UK than in a French/Belgian laïcité framework). But it did not rule on the matter. Instead it remitted the question of legality back to the Belgian and French courts to decide, and merely speculated about possibilities of moving staff to different roles.

These two cases were decided under the European Employment Directive, hence they went to the European Court of Justice, whereas the two cases from 2013 were decided under the European Convention on Human Rights and hence they went to the European Court of Human Rights. But the indirect discrimination law is essentially the same in both sets of courts. So I find it hard to see how, given the 2013 decisions, the Belgian and French courts will be able to do anything but uphold the indirect discrimination claim (or if they do, how, if it then goes back to the ECJ, it will be able to do anything but likewise).

And even if the eventual ruling is against a claim of indirect discrimination, the ECJ remains just one of two legal avenues open to these two employees – they can also take an ECtHR claim. And I can’t see how the ECtHR can rule in a different way here to how it did in the Eweida case.

Headlines saying the ECJ has allowed employers to ban headscarves are premature at best and completely wrong at worst.

This editorial originally appeared in the British Humanist Association’s ebulletin, a weekly briefing to BHA members and supporters covering the latest news, views, videos, events relating to Humanism in the UK. Sign up for the ebulletin to receive the BHA’s briefing each week.

It didn’t start in America and it didn’t start with the election of Donald Trump. For months pundits have discussed the phenomenon of ‘post-truth politics’: politics deliberately based on simplification, appealing to the raw emotions of the electorate. Evidence, historical precedent, well-reasoned analyses: all count for nothing. In fact they are repudiated as being the preserve of elites.

This populism replacing reasoned politics is now global and a major threat to universal human rights, to secularism, to reason, and to humanist values.

In India, Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government disparages the open secular framework that has long held the most diverse nation in the world in some sort of social harmony. In Poland, the Government is preparing once again for an aggressive assault on the rights of women, justified entirely through appeals to Catholic dogma. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte indulges in sermon-like attacks on atheists, interwoven with rabble-rousing cries to bring back the death penalty. And in Russia, Putin, re-elected President in 2012, has used aggressive foreign policy to settle domestic political issues while imprisoning those who offend the church or criticise his regime. In Turkey, we see one of the greatest tragedies of our age: a country full of cosmopolitan potential transformed into a police state under Erdoğan, without democracy and without a free press or judiciary. In Hungary, the rule of law is rapidly becoming history. Elections in the next few months threaten the rise of far-right authoritarian parties in Austria, France, and the Netherlands.

When the world is so very far from what we want it to be, there is a temptation to retreat, to tend to one’s own garden and look to the private and the domestic. These are, after all, areas of our lives where we at least have some sort of control, and where we can have some positive effect.

This isn’t entirely the wrong instinct. Just as peace between nations starts with love between people and happiness in societies, our little choices can affect the bigger picture. So much of the BHA’s work is directed to the lives of individuals: our school volunteers encourage young people to open their minds and their sympathies, our pastoral carers give like-minded support to those in personal crises, and our celebrants guide families and couples through some of the highest and lowest points in their lives.

But public crises call for our public involvement, not just private actions.

As humanists, we champion secularism because we believe everyone is treated better when governments and churches are kept apart. We champion human rights not simply because we believe in the equal dignity of every living person, but because we know that this is something all-too easily forgotten by humankind. And we steadfastly champion democracy and the rule of law, along with those civil values that ensure their smooth functioning.

In all that we do, these social values are our guides, along with reason, empathy, and kindness. The future is uncertain and ever-harder to predict. But we must enter it optimistically, rationally, and with a cool head on our shoulders. Our humanist way of thinking has given the world so much over the centuries and its resources are far from depleted. We are entering a dark chapter in the human story, but the light has burned brightly in darker times than this. Today we all have a responsibility to tend the flame.

In 2008, the blasphemy laws were abolished in England and Wales. They protected the tender sympathies of the Anglican God against any insults whether spoken in public or written. Relics of a more theocratic age, their eventual abolition may have seemed inevitable, but in practice many organisations and individuals had to campaign hard for it for many decades. Real change was anything but a foregone conclusion: at the same time as the case was being made for progressive reforms, there were those pushing not for the abolition of blasphemy laws, but for their extension.

These calls went back to 1989 when the then Archbishop of Canterbury had called for the blasphemy laws be extended to criminalise offences against Islam. This was in the context of the violent street reaction to Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, stoked by the incendiary rhetoric of the Ayatollah Khomeini, which left many dead around the world. He didn’t get his way, but perhaps the Archbishop needn’t have bothered, as it seems that criticism or mockery of religion is now being censured by many public bodies of their own free will, and a social climate prevails which allows this to happen.

The last few years have seen many examples of religion being made immune from criticism or mockery in our public spaces, especially in universities, where student union authorities have played the role of heavy-handed thought police. In University College London, the humanist society was sanctioned by the authorities for using a cartoon of Jesus and Mohammed at a bar to advertise their sociable events. That same week, a humanist society talk at Queen Mary’s was cancelled due to death threats. A week later, at LSE, students were censured over ‘Jesus and Mo’ cartoons, and excluded from their own fresher’s fair a year later over T-shirts. At London South Bank, it was for using Christian imagery of the creation of Adam the advertise their drinks. And at Warwick, it was for using a cartoon of a stick man throwing religious symbols like crosses into a bin. Similar incidents, ranging from the troublingly absurd to the decidedly threatening, have taken place at Goldsmiths, Reading, and on many other campuses around England.

The latest victim of course is four-time Olympic medallist Louis Smith, forced to apologise and banned by British Gymnastics for enjoying a silly joke at the expense of religious practices which many people find ridiculous, and, in the course of doing so, offending those who would prefer to see religious ideas protected from scrutiny. Conceding to those demands sets us on a worrying course.

Absurd though we may think them, religions are big and powerful ideas. Many people think they are not just absurd but malign: barriers to human intellectual and moral progress. Whatever we think of them, in the history of Europe almost all social progress has come from criticising – yes, and ridiculing – their ideas and practices. All the benefits of free thought and free speech that we enjoy in Britain today come as a result of overturning their control.

In 2016, close to 70 countries have real blasphemy laws in statute. 43 of these treat it as an imprisonable offence, and in six others it is a crime punished with torture or the death sentence. The countries that actually enforce these rules are not places where you would want to live. The laws create a totalitarian atmosphere where people are so unfree that many live out the entirety of their lives never speaking their true thoughts, even to their closest friends and family. I have met many emigrants from Saudi Arabia in particular for whom this was true, but it is a pattern true of any country where the price of freedom is mortally high. Conform, be silent, never speak your mind. The alternative is to give up your liberty, your health, or even your life.

In our liberal democratic society, public authorities have a duty to protect and advance human rights, including our right to freedom of expression. They should not be victimising individuals for lawful actions, however offensive. Individuals, of course, have other obligations, and will keep their own conscience. We may exercise self-restraint in our own expressions out of politeness or respect. We may even urge others to do the same. But we should never call on the law to enforce our personal values or tastes, however deeply held these may be.

We have all had our most cherished beliefs, identities, or ways of life subject to ridicule at one time or another. When we feel that way, we have a choice. Our duty as citizens in a liberal society is to either engage with our detractors and attempt to persuade them to our way of thinking, or to shrug and ignore it. And then we get on with our lives, accepting that the discomfort we feel is a very small price to pay for freedom.

For two years now the British Humanist Association has been training and accrediting non-religious people to provide pastoral care in a range of institutional settings throughout the UK. Our network has been rapidly expanding and now stands at over 120 accredited carers operating nationally. All our carers share a common goal in supporting the pastoral needs of patients, students, prisoners, service users, their families, and institution staff at some of the most challenging of times in their lives.

Until now, many non-religious people have not been able to access a like-minded service and instead have settled for religious chaplaincy or not engaged with what’s on offer because of its religious content. Whether that be someone facing the end of their life and wanting to discuss existential questions around meaning and purpose; someone locked in a prison cell twenty-three hours a day dealing with the reality of their loss or freedom, or someone unable to cope with the pressures of adolescence combined with leaving home for the first time – our service is there to provide a listening ear and empower people to make sense of their problems. That is not to say that religious chaplains can’t provide excellent support to non-religious people but just as sometimes a Christian may wish to discuss their issues with someone who shares their worldview, a Muslim a Muslim, a Buddhist a Buddhist… it follows that a non-religious person would also like that same choice and opportunity.

The Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network (NRPSN.org.uk) was developed to address two key areas of inequality: 1) to ensure that all non-religious people have access to a like-minded care service, and 2) to ensure that non-religious people have an equal opportunity to provide pastoral care. To ensure we are able to address these two issues we have had to train and accredit a highly professional volunteer base, whilst at the same time work at a strategic level to put agreements in place a promote our network and its objectives. In both these areas we have had major successes of late and now in hospitals, prisons, care homes, hospices, homeless charities, and universities, literally thousands of people have received support from one of our volunteers.

So what can you expect if you speak to one of the Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network? All of our carers’ work is centred around the needs of the individual that they are supporting. They will listen, they will empathise, and they will allow space for individuals to explore their current circumstances without judgement. Being listened to by someone in this way is an incredibly powerful experience and can have huge therapeutic benefits for the receiver. However, in this relatively early stage in our development, it is absolutely crucial to get the message out there and let non-religious people know that this service is available to them. Thousands of people are entering institutions everyday who would benefit from the support we offer but they don’t know it is there. But just because people don’t ask for it doesn’t mean that it is not wanted or needed. Thirty years ago there were only a relatively small number of humanist wedding and funeral ceremonies in Britain each year, but today there are thousands of funerals and weddings taking place across the UK, as more and more people cite their desire to mark significant occasions in a way that represents their beliefs.

The next time you find yourself in a setting that you would expect to find a chaplain or where pastoral support is being offered, and if you find yourself in need of emotional support, ask to see the non-religious carer. The more people that ask for a non-religious option, the easier it will become for us to make our case for greater numbers of our carers volunteering and working in hospitals. That will lead to much greater availability of non-religious pastoral care and more people getting the support that they need when they need it most.

It’s as though a door opened and someone beckoned; I didn’t respond, and the door was closed for always. I was still a non-believer, but not so militant now – perhaps because of that little Madonna, or because of my friend Maria who trusted in that God of hers in spite of everything.

These are the words of my narrator Jane Lambert. She has had one of those uplifting subjective experiences – the kind we call ‘transcendental’ – in front of an exquisite painting of the Madonna and Child, in the company of her Catholic friend, Maria.

My novel Timed Out is about ageing, Internet dating and also about Humanism. Perhaps not an obvious combination.

Timed Out is a new novel about ageing and Humanism from former academic Barbara Lorna Hudson.

This is how the story took shape. The germ of the idea came when I myself retired and found myself asking what is the point of me? I think a lot of us, especially if we are without close family and have been totally absorbed in a career, do wonder that, and cast around for ways to find fulfilment and a meaning for our retirement years.

My protagonist Jane embarks on a search for a partner via Internet dating, and her longing to love and be loved is the dominant storyline. And as she embarks on her new life, she continues to wrestle with the big unanswered questions. She has her ‘religious moments’ – but do they signify anything supernatural?

‘As you age, you see death approaching and you take stock. You wonder about the future and what it’s all for, and you still have those moments when you get a sort of inkling that there might be more …’ A Catholic funeral, a visit to Auschwitz, and memories of growing up in a village full of bigoted Chapel people, all help Jane to clarify her ideas.

The main challenge of this novel was to weave these strands together – Jane’s relationships (it would have been so much easier to focus solely on her quest for love) and the Big Questions. For example, the funeral episode involves the beauty of religious ritual, the nonsense of religious dogma, Jane’s sense of loss and loneliness, and her relationship with her atheist friends. A visit to Auschwitz leads naturally to questioning of the existence of God and also sets the scene for a growing closeness between Jane and the man she is with.

Despite my USP of an older woman and Internet dating, Timed Out was judged to be ‘not commercial’ by several agents. A report by a senior figure in one of the major publishing houses stated unequivocally that the reading public do not want to read about religion – whether for or against. Novels have always been explorations of the human condition. How can we interest readers in stories that do this from a humanist perspective? I think an absorbing story and non-believer characters they can identify with should help. It’s not easy, though. I wish more humanist novelists would take up the challenge.

Barbara Lorna Hudson is a novelist, as well as a former psychiatric social worker, marital therapist, and an Oxford don. Her novel Timed Out is available to buy on Amazon.

This blog is part of a series of perspectives on the EU referendum from prominent humanists on either side of the debate. Each puts forward a humanist case for the United Kingdom either remaining a member of, or leaving, the European Union. All six perspectives are linked in the image below.

Matt Ridley: Religious skeptics should be EU skeptics

My biggest reason for voting leave this month is the European Union’s democratic deficit and bureaucratic surplus, which makes it an ill-suited organization for bringing prosperity and peace in the evolving and emergent global world we increasingly inhabit. It’s too top-down in philosophy, and too parochial in mindset. My euro-scepticism is dead in line with my religious skepticism, though you certainly don’t have to be an unbeliever to vote leave: I don’t like being told what to do by a priestly class.

‘My euro-scepticism is dead in line
with my religious skepticism, though you certainly don’t have to be an unbeliever
to vote leave: I don’t like being told
what to do by a priestly class.’

There is a certain similarity between the way fans of the European Union talk about Brussels and the way believers talk about the Almighty. Benevolent, omniscient, and remote, the European Commission sees far into our hearts and knows exactly when we need to be told through a directive not to buy something, not to make something, not to build something. It’s currently trying to tell us not to vape, for instance, at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry which has a nice little earner in prescription nicotine replacement, even though it is now clear that vaping is massive life-saver.

The entire basis of the EU is that leaders know best. It was set up by people horrified by what demagogues had done in the twentieth century, and were determined to put technocrats in charge instead, and insulate them from the democratic winds. It’s a stretch to call this religious, but the parallels with the papacy in its pomp are all too clear.

In Britain we nurtured a very different tradition, broke with Rome, killed a king who thought he had a divine right to rule and gradually absorbed the message of the enlightenment that the world is not run by great men, let alone deities, but is changed by ordinary people through trade, innovation, habit, and fashion. More than any other European country we resisted the urge to worship a leader and lend him (never her) the power to tell us what to do.

It is in that tradition that the current movement to leave the European Union should be seen. We do not like the imposition of a single currency, with the acute pain it has caused to many people, just as a way of forging a united polity. We do not like the fact that more than half our laws originate in the European commission and are justiciable by the European court, neither of whom is answerable to the people. We do not trust priesthoods and never have.

In the 1950s, when central planning was in its heyday, when we in Britain also still lived under a thicket of rules about what we could eat, buy or do, it was no surprise that the fore-runner of the EU began as a centralized, top-down, dirigiste bureaucracy. That was the way of the future then, before the collapse of living standards in Russia, China, and more recently Venezuela shows just where central planning’s faults lay.

In the 1970s, it just about made sense for Britain to join this regional bloc, which was at least partly dominated by the highly liberalized and free-market German philosophy of Werner Ehrhard. But now, in an era of cheap container shipping, free Skype intercontinental phone calls, budget airlines, rock-bottom World Trade Organisation standards, and global trading rules negotiated industry by industry at the global level, the regional focus of the European Union is an irrelevance and an anachronism. It perpetually tries to dictate rules for consumers and citizens within one continent, ignoring the wider world where we all trade.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the tech sector and the digital industry. Europe has not manage to negotiate a trade deal with America despite years of trying, yet that does not stop you or me buying software and hardware from the big American digital firms all the time. The EU has a dismal track record in creating digital start-ups, throttling them at birth with petty rules, so that we have not one to compare with Apple, Google, Facebook or Amazon. (One of our best candidates, Spotify, is threatening to leave the EU for America.)

The parallel with Humanism is pretty obvious. Humanism means suspicion of superstition, but is also means respect for human beings’ wishes. People have voted for a digital world with great enthusiasm over the past few decades by buying digital products, joining digital networks and embracing egalitarian values. Into this world lumbers a bunch of highly paid, lowly taxed, richly fed Eurocrats, who never saw this coming, saying things like “we must have a minimum of boring French films on Netflix” or we insist that hyperlinks respect intellectual property, or whatever the latest wheeze big companies have breathed into their ears over a four-course meal in Brussels.

In the sixteenth century, admittedly for carnal reasons, the English got a chance to tell a wealthy and parasitic priestly class, answerable to nobody and with a top-down view of the world, to get stuffed. We have the same chance again today.

Matt Ridley is a journalist and Conservative Party peer who is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. He is also a patron of Conservative Humanists.

Hermann Vogel’s Death of Spartacus, showing the Thracian gladiator’s capture, shortly before his crucifixion

Historical, mythical or legendary, the crucifixion of Christ represents the story of many. Whether or not the man called Jesus existed – and the modern scholarly view on this seems to range from ‘probably’ to ‘possibly’ – the gospel narrative reflects a wider human story, the story of thousands upon thousands of nameless and forgotten individuals who were crucified at the hands of the Roman state.

For anyone who assumes that crucifixion was an unusual or extraordinary event in Roman times, they should consider the case of the rebels led by Spartacus. This low-born Thracian gladiator-slave led a revolt so successful that it caused considerable embarrassment to the ruling Senate. When Crassus finally crushed the rebellion in 71 BCE, he ordered the crucifixion of an estimated 6,000 slave-rebels along the Appian Way, the main road leading out from the city of Rome; he also brought back the ruthless practice of decimation to punish and terrorise the cohort of soldiers that he deemed to have failed him the most in his earlier attempts to quash the rebellion.

Crucifixion was public and humiliating – deliberately so – and its use in the case of the slave-rebels illustrates several important points about this notorious and brutal method of execution. Its aim was to demean the victim and intimidate the observer – this was what happened to you when you challenged the Roman rule of law. Crucifixion was a servile supplicium – reserved for slaves and foreigners, non-Roman citizens, deserting soldiers, pirates and insurgents; wealthy Roman men were often removed from society due to political machinations or the whim of current authority, but never was crucifixion used to dispense with them.

In its broadest definition, crucifixion meant that the victim was impaled and/or tied to some form of frame, cross, stake or tree and left to hang for anything from several hours to several days. Causes of death included exhaustion and shock brought on by extreme pain and exsanguination (sometimes in part from a scourging prior to the crucifixion), heart failure and/or pulmonary collapse from the immense pressure put upon the victim’s heart and lungs; the victim’s demise could be hastened dramatically by increasing the intensity of this pressure, hence the common practice of breaking the legs to precipitate collapse. It was a sadistic and grotesque formula for murder, exploited in extremis by the Romans.

It is not clear whether the emperor Constantine outlawed crucifixion in the 4th Century CE, as is claimed by Christian triumphalist writers, but certainly it had been outlawed in the Roman empire by the mid 5th century. However, the Classical world is not the only context in which this abhorrent method of slaughter has been practised. Japanese haritsuke started with the execution of 26 Christians in Nagasaki in 1597 and recurred intermittently up until the last century. Islam has also subsumed the practice, with verse 5:33 of the Qur’an calling for the crucifixion of those who wage war against Allah or the Prophet. Crucifixion is still practised in some Islamic countries and there have been recently documented cases in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Yemen; it is most commonly used to make a degrading and threatening showpiece of the victim’s body rather than as a method of execution, but this is not exclusively the case.

‘The Easter story means nothing to a humanist from a spiritual perspective… Yet each year the human side of the Easter story can serve as a sober reminder of man’s inhumanity to man.’

The Easter story means nothing to a humanist from a spiritual perspective; we do not believe that Christ was the son of God, nor do we believe that he died for our sins and was resurrected. Yet each year the human side of the Easter story can serve as a sober reminder of man’s inhumanity to man. In a modern context, we can and should take action by giving support to the work of organisations such as Amnesty International, who campaign tirelessly and effectively against the use of torture and capital punishment right across the globe.

But as a Classicist, I cannot help but see the story of Christ as a legend within its ancient milieu and recall the incalculable number of wasted human lives that resonate through its narrative. In the name of Roman civilisation, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people were tortured and crucified, forgotten souls with no afforded legacy of reverence or pious gratitude to preserve them in the conscious minds of the living.

Mike Flood asks how much is the Information Age being tainted and diminished by disinformation.

The Internet is full of information, coming at you thick and fast. But how does one separate the wheat from the chaff? Photo: Nazly Ahmed

The Internet Society once observed that the Internet is ‘proving to be one of the most powerful amplifiers of speech ever invented. It offers a global megaphone for voices that might otherwise be heard only feebly, if at all. It invites and facilitates multiple points of view and dialogue in ways unimaginable by traditional, one way mass media.’ The Internet is this and much more besides.

But as we become increasingly dependent on this miracle of human ingenuity, we are also having to cope with the internet’s darker side – bad information, propaganda, cybercrime and pornography. Here are two less flattering descriptions: ‘an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies’ (Mike Royko) and ‘the biggest lavatory wall in history’ (AC Grayling).

We might live in an ‘Information Age’, but how much is it being tainted and diminished by disinformation? We are accustomed to tyrants, dictators and jihadists putting out their warped propaganda and fabrications. But there are a host of other more subtle sources of bad information that we are exposed to 24-7 and this raises questions about the impact this may be having on personal wellbeing, social cohesion and international relations.

1 Amplifier of speech… or lavatory wall?

Online social networking services like Facebook, video sharing websites like YouTube, and open source blogging sites like WordPress enable anybody with a computer and a modicum of nous to disseminate information instantaneously to a global audience. And if people pass the information on, and it is sufficiently interesting or scurrilous, it may go viral and reach millions. But most of the information posted online has not been edited or peer reviewed and therein lies a problem because it can be partial or inaccurate, or just plain wrong. Whether this is by design (i.e. disinformation) or not (misinformation) is beside the point; in any case the distinction is often blurred by spin.

In 2010, Dow Jones carried out a survey of ‘Bad Info’ on the free web. This identified ‘opinion disguised as fact’ and ‘biased sources’ as the most frequently cited types of bad information. People use weasel words (‘many experts agree…’), selective omission, imply without saying, bury inconvenient facts, include misleading statistics or images, and so on… More than a third of respondents indicated that they encountered bad information ‘often’ or ‘constantly’. The most affected sectors were businesspeople, students, and inexperienced researchers.

There are websites that specialise in racist, xenophobic or indecent material, but bad information is also found on websites like Wikipedia, which were set up for the best of reasons and in the public good. Friends and rivals are constantly trying to manipulate content – be it the biography of controversial leaders or celebrities, information about a commercial product (pro or anti), anything about Israel, etc. The intention may be to manage reputation, promote some interest or other, affect page rank/link traffic, or simply to cause harm. It is difficult for any of us to know the extent of ‘Wikihacking’.

Another concern is how far search engines give a balanced view of what’s available on line. Who sets the algorithms? Things may change for the better as the programming gets even more sophisticated – or they may get worse, if commercial interests have their way. Google has already announced that websites that are not mobile-friendly will be pushed down the rankings, and there is talk of it launching an initiative to reduce bad information with a program which ranks websites according to veracity using a ‘knowledge-based trust’ scoring system that checks website data against verified facts in a ‘knowledge vault’. This should penalise web pages containing suspect or contradictory information.

The internet is censored to protect intellectual property and discourage defamation, harassment and obscene material, but this is but a drop in the ocean when it comes to removing bad information. So whilst the internet provides unrivalled access to information, those who surf its often murky waters have to be extremely careful. Things may not be all they seem.

2 Other sources of bad information

But bedroom bloggers, pranksters, and mischief-makers are not the only source of bad information. We also have the outpourings of religious zealots, New Age thinkers, unprincipled corporations, government spin doctors, and conspiracy theorists. This has always been the case but the issue is made more problematic and challenging by the Internet and the relative ease with which such material can now be accessed and used.

Mainstream religions and cults are major sources of ‘myth-information’ and promulgate misinformation by definition – they can’t all be right, although they can all be wrong, as atheists like to point out. How many religions put out disinformation is an interesting question: some tele-evangelists clearly do; and lying to non-believers (taqiyya) is permissible in Islam.

Proponents of woo, including New Age thinking, alternative therapies, and all manner of snake oil also propagate bad information and make claims that are unscientific, unproven, or unprovable. Whether astrology, biorhythms, esoteric healing, extrasensory perception, homeopathy, reflexology etc. work is debatable, but some may on occasion through the power of suggestion (the placebo or nocebo effect).

Big businesses do too. Big corporations are regularly accused of spreading disinformation. The criticism is most intense with high profile industries that promote controversial technologies – GMOs, nuclear power, waste incineration, fracking and the like. But naysayers are also prone to use propaganda and selectively interpret facts, and this just adds to the confusion.

The media is also culpable. Tabloid newspapers and news corporations are regularly accused of distorting or sensationalising issues – the former by making up stories; the latter when, for fear of being scooped, they broadcast without adequate scrutiny. (Cf. The new phenomenon of fact- and rumour-checking websites, and the extension of the idea to the media are good developments.)

Governments and state agencies regularly disseminate questionable material, often with a good dose of ‘spin’, and they are not averse to using negative advertising to attack opponents’ record, policies or personalities. This muddies the water. Some governments go further and suppress historical facts, even making it illegal to challenge the official line. Turkey’s denial of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is but one of many examples.

Conspiracy theories can be set in train by any of the above; they flourish on the internet and in some parts of the media. Sadly, they are widely believed in many parts of the world so have political currency. This is especially so where governments are economical with the truth and suppress bad or inconvenient news.

3 Costs and consequences

So what impact does exposure to bad information have on public attitudes, behaviour and wellbeing? And do we ourselves actively make the situation worse by ‘confirmation bias’, our tendency to search for, interpret or recall information in a way that confirms our beliefs or prejudices? We surround ourselves with people who share our views and reject ideas or concepts that don’t fit comfortably into our view of the world. Here are six consequences that should concern us all:

Misinformed citizens can influence elections and hence the political colour and policies of those in office. Being misinformed is in many ways worse than being uninformed, especially when misguided individuals state their beliefs and opinions with such confidence. They can become intolerant, even violent, and this – and the publicity it generates – can represent a serious threat to social cohesion.

Misapplied resources: Secularists consider support for ‘faith’ schools and other religious enterprises a gross misuse of taxpayers’ money, and they condemn the state funding of pseudoscientific ‘alternative’ ‘medicines’ through the NHS. But in my mind, perhaps the most extreme example of bad information having resource costs was the infamous ‘dodgy dossier’, which was used in 2003 to justify the invasion of Iraq. The Iraq War cost tens of thousands of lives and billions of pounds – and cost Britain influence across the Middle East and beyond.

Risk to health and life: Alternative therapies are potentially dangerous as they are magnets for charlatans and conmen, and this poses risks to public health – as do pious believers who reject medical advice and rely on prayer to treat life-threatening conditions like cancer, or who refuse blood transfusion or vaccination.

‘Like a disease, pseudoscience runs through broad gutters of sophisticated misinformation, contaminating the groundwater of common knowledge and leeching into the minds of the media-fed masses. Undetected and uncorrected, furtively avoiding verifiable fact, bad information propagates disastrous errors and mistakes.’ Kelton Rhoades

Damaged minds: Young children cannot tell fact from fiction and are easily indoctrinated into faith. In later life their minds will be closed to science – what Stephen Law calls ‘intellectual black holes’ – and any idea or thought that threatens to undermine their cherished faith and practices. It is tragic but hardly surprising that idealistic youngsters become vulnerable to firebrand preachers or to grooming over social media, and that some are enticed into jihad, even martyrdom.

Intolerance and division: Strict madrasas and ‘faith’ schools create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality that does little to promote community understanding and social cohesion; some ban music and other cultural pursuits, and or teach corrupt forms of science in which evolution, if it is taught at all, is dismissed as ‘just a theory’, with ‘intelligent design’ promoted as true. Groups that rigidly follow the scriptures, like the Scientologists, Plymouth Brethren, Jehovah Witnesses, creationists, and Salafists, tend to be intolerant of the views of others and characteristically ostracise apostates, including close family members. Victims can be mentally scarred, and some fall victim to ‘honour’ killings – all as a result of social conditioning and bad information.

Weakened social cohesion: False rumours and conspiracy theories are spawned by ignorance, misunderstanding, or malice. They are invariably toxic and can lead to offensive, uncompromising attitudes, and aggressive behaviour towards people of other races, faiths, or customs, especially where repeated by multiple, seemingly independent agents. The speed of spread can be impressive (‘digital wildfire’) and the damage they can do to public attitudes, community cohesion and international relations is not easy to repair. And there may be more subtle effects: studies suggest that people who are exposed to anti-government conspiracy theories are less likely to vote than those who have read information refuting the conspiracy; similarly with climate change conspiracies (less intention to take action to reduce their carbon footprint), and anti-vaccine conspiracies (reduced intentions to get vaccinated). In each case, conspiracy theories decrease social engagement because they leave people feeling powerless.

Self-censorship: Bad information is difficult to counter: once released it can be referenced over and over, even after the original posting has been refuted or withdrawn. Mud sticks. Indeed, confirmation bias can maintain or even strengthen people’s beliefs in the face of criticism or contrary evidence. Moreover, it has become difficult to speak one’s mind or voice genuine criticism of anything related to religion, particularly concerning Islam. Many freethinkers feel restrained and increasingly self-censor for fear of being accused of being prejudiced, intolerant, racist, anti-Semitic, or Islamophobic.

‘The problem with free speech is that it’s hard, and self-censorship is the path of least resistance. But, once you learn to keep yourself from voicing unwelcome thoughts, you forget how to think them – how to think freely at all – and ideas perish at conception.’ George Packer

Apathy: The omnipresence of bad or suspect information on the internet and in the outpourings of hard-line believers, special-interest lobbies, news corporations and government spin doctors raises serious concerns about anyone’s ability to make informed decisions in today’s Information Age: it may well be a major contributory factor to so much present day apathy.

4 What can be done about bad information?

Bad information can and should be challenged – or ridiculed and derided. Period. But there is a lot of it around and one needs to choose one’s battles carefully. One also needs to employ considerable emotional intelligence, especially when people’s cherished cultural practices or beliefs are in the cross-hairs. We live today in a global village, and we should be looking to make friends rather than alienate and antagonise people: as Benjamin Corey argues: ‘we must learn to recognize that all social groups – regardless of religious belief or lack thereof – bring something to the table that is worthy. Coming together to pursue peace, justice, equality, and all the other values we hold in-kind, we find that if we failed to partner together we would be dismissing friends and allies on a wide array of issues.’

Many of the following points should be self-evident, but there’s no harm in reciting them here.

Don’t add to the problem

Be vigilant – make sure that ‘a little red light’ comes on in our head whenever you get near to an ‘intellectual black hole’ so that you don’t get sucked in / fall victim.

Keep an open mind – be aware of your own bias and the tendency to interpret ambiguous evidence as supportive of your own position or prejudices.

Be careful – use reputable sources and cross-check information before passing it on; make sure you are not yourself contributing to the problem of bad information. Fact- and rumour-checking websites may be helpful.

Be constructive – there’s enough negative comment around.

Challenge harmful attitudes and practices

Challenge suspect facts and dangerous opinions, especially where those involved have political aspirations and seek to curtail or prevent freedom of thought and expression.

Be persistent – refuting errors, pointing out bias needs to be done with vigour, and repeated often if it is to stand any chance of having an effect. But above all:

Be respectful and aware of cultural and religious sensitivities – questioning people’s faith or beliefs causes distress and offence, and only serves to increase division. What is the point in arguing with people who have ‘passed the event horizon’? Moreover, challenging vulnerable individuals who draw comfort from their faith – or from complementary medicine or some other lifestyle choice – could have serious consequences if it leaves a gaping vacuum in their lives. Be very careful!

Look for allies

Get more involved – support local humanist groups; talk to schools; attend local SACREs; challenge local sources of bad information, including elected representatives who support ‘faith’ schools, public services run by evangelical groups, or alternative therapies on the state; and subscribe to national organisations that promote human rights and freedom of thought and expression.

Collaborate – we need to be looking for allies and areas of common ground not making enemies and promoting The Accord Coalition sets a good example: it includes religious groups, humanists, teachers, trade unionists, educationalists and civil rights activists, working together for inclusive education, upholding civil rights, and promoting mutual understanding.

Steve Neumann sums it up nicely: ‘forget about disabusing believers of their core convictions with the ‘universal acid’ of rationality – the best way to fight for social justice and pluralism is to ally ourselves with those who share the same values, regardless of their metaphysical beliefs.’ Yes.

Critical thinking

Last but not least, we have to be more assiduous in promoting critical thinking at all levels of the education system, from pre-school to the university of the Third Age: with so much information now available on the internet, teaching ‘facts’ is much less important than it once was. The essential need today is to develop a good ‘nose’ to smell out bad information, and to acquire the skills and confidence to distinguish facts from opinion, and reliable sources from those that are questionable. These should be priority areas in all educational establishments.

Education is the only real weapon that we have in the fight against bad information – and it goes without saying, giving people the ability to think for themselves changes lives and makes the world a more interesting and more wondrous place to be.

Mike Flood is Chair of Milton Keynes Humanists. He works for Powerful Information, a charity involved with grassroots international development. This is a shortened version of Mike’s article. The full article with quotes and references can be found on the Milton Keynes Humanists website.

Ben Greenhalgh justifies our fascination with stories on the small screen.

Do you suffer from TV addiction? Photo: Lars Ploughmann

The door creaks open and you emerge, still grasping the duvet that you have failed to part from for days. It’s stained, ridden with crumbs and stinks like stale beer. With your square eyed comrades following cautiously behind you, your eyes strain to adjust to the new world. Your legs are weak from lack of use, your bladder exhausted from putting off trips to the toilet at important plot points. Your mouth is dry, and you’ve forgotten how to speak for the first few seconds until you utter the catch phrase of a generation: “I can’t wait for the next one!”

These symptoms point to a clear diagnosis of series addiction. It’s contagious to say the least; yet, I happily get infected.

There can be no doubt that we are a nation that loves our TV. Conversations surrounding certain well known shows frequently make their way into the social symposium. So much so, a recent study by Sky Atlantic showed the pressure to be in the know with the latest must-see shows, or keep up with the workplace chat that surrounds them, has led to millions of people faking their way through conversations rather than be seen to be out of the loop. This to me is fantastic. People want to share the storytelling experience with others, and it couldn’t come at a better time.

There are of course those who lambast such reliance upon screens: ‘Watching too much TV and films is a waste of valuable time: a slovenly and hedonistic pursuit with little merit!’ They shout that our brains will turn to mush, we will fail to form real social relationships, forget how to read, how to write, and will eventually become puddles of inanimate pointlessness. Personally, I think such people watch too much science fiction.

Although the written word will always maintain its pride of place beside humanity as the most powerful form of artistry, time changes: books have become just a part of our vast entertainment culture. Being in front of the box is a fundamental piece of our pleasure palate, and, if supplied with enough crisps and sweets, we can devour episodes and films with equal zeal, because, at the heart of each show or episode, is our human thirst for story.

Our need for story is seemingly inherent within our very biology: even when we dream we tell stories to ourselves. The reason is summed up beautifully by critic Kenneth Burke: ‘stories are equipment for living’.

As a species, we should constantly be questioning things, especially that of established norm. We need to persistently reinvent, challenge and adapt in order to better ourselves and the society we choose to create for ourselves and others. Arguably, the most important question we ask ourselves towards this end was posed in Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’: how should a person live their life?

The factual answer eludes us of course, somehow hidden behind the wildfires of life where we find ourselves in a constant struggle to match our means with our dreams. Traditionally, humankind has made it the task of wisdom in the forms of philosophy, science, religion, and art to answer this ultimate question. Instead of coming up with answers, we have taken parts of each to bolster and create a liveable meaning, often resulting in conflict through disagreements on how much of each wisdom plays a role in forming just societies. I can think of one in particular. However, as our reliance upon this traditional wisdom diminishes, we continue to look to a source we still believe in, the art of story; the art of learning from the collective experience of humanity.

The best shows do not simply deal with entertaining us. Entertainment and enjoyment comes from our understanding of the characters, our empathy with them and their choices within the events of the story. We condemn and support these choices: actively discuss them with others as a way of learning about, not only our own moral outlook, but others as well. We learn from the characters’ mistakes and successes, we follow them through their trials and see them emerge on the other side failed or triumphant, mirroring our own transformation once the drama has ended.

Stories, whatever their medium, aren’t simply a flight from reality as some believe them to be; they are vehicles carrying us along in our search for reality so we are better equipped to make sense of the chaos of life.

Stories are finding explosive growth in modern society, and within series alone, that many of us follow dutifully, we are offered a communal way of understanding parts of the human experience aside from shrinking dogmatic ideology that once acted alone to create meaningful existence. The more we watch and question these tales as a society, the more we question the world around us.

So, when you eventually crawl out from some dark hole after a 10-hour binge of The Walking Dead, think of it more as a philosophical lesson: an entertaining debate into your own power as an individual, and a closer understanding of the trials and tribulations of that individual within society. Have a shower and some proper food though; that’s good for you too.

Ben Greenhalgh is a philosopher and writer. He works full time as a tutor for vulnerable young people who cannot be educated within mainstream education.